Revelation
by bgharison
Summary: Steve and Kono, in the aftermath of General Pak. Instead of seeing the events played out as they happened, he saw the mercenary cover Kono's mouth with his hand, saw him pull a knife from his belt, watched in paralyzed horror as he drew it, swift and sure, across her throat. He saw her body, motionless, in a pool of blood on his bedroom floor.


A/N: I recently rewatched 1:9 (The Siege) and there was that moment when Steve . . . dispatched . . . the person sneaking up behind Kono, and there was, maybe, possibly, I thought, a little . . . look. So then this happened. The dialogue between Steve and Danny in the last scene is word for word from the episode . . . the liberties taken with the subtext, however, are mine.

#*#*#*#*#

Steve was accustomed to the adrenaline dump that came after . . . after combat, after losing a friend. His hands were shaking by the time he stepped out of the shower; still wired, still processing all that had happened.

Still bleeding.

SWAT had been sorted, having arrived far too after the fact to do more than cleanup; still, Steve was glad for their help. General Pak and his family had been safely ensconced . . . wherever they were going to be secured. They were no longer Steve's responsibility.

His team had quietly filled in the details for everyone who needed to know what went down, and why, while a hapless EMT intern attempted to apply steri-strips to a few of his deeper cuts. They'd each, in turn, come to check on him, to assure him that he'd done the only thing he could do, he'd made the only choice Bullfrog had left him to make; and then they'd left, exhausted and filthy, to try to sort themselves out.

Max had zipped the body of Nick Taylor neatly into a black bag, and Steve had watched it whisked away in the back of the medical examiner's SUV. Another black bag had been strapped to a flimsy gurney, and awkwardly hauled down his stairs.

Steve reached into the refrigerator, paused over a Longboard, and grabbed a water bottle instead. He looked around at the disaster that was his house, hauled himself wearily up the stairs, through his room, and stepped out onto the second story lanai.

He thought, maybe, he could still see blood on the sand.

The shaking had now extended to his knees, so he dropped, somewhat ungracefully, into one of the old chairs. He realized idly, as he took a swig of water, that he'd neglected to tend to some of the cuts inflicted by glass, and debris, and Bullfrog's fists, and he felt the slow ooze of blood, warm and sticky, in a few places. He ignored it, willing the worst of the trembling to subside.

His eyes closed in exhaustion, and he waited for the inevitable replay of his fight in the surf with Bullfrog; he waited to relive the sensation of his friend's body tensing in shock and pain and then going limp. This wasn't his first rodeo; he knew what to expect.

Except, apparently, not.

It wasn't Bullfrog he saw. It was Kono.

When his eyes closed, he saw the image of Kono, upstairs, in the bedroom. In inexplicably sharp detail . . . looking past the trained mercenary creeping silently behind her, seeing the strong line of her back, the graceful sweep of her neck.

Strong, steady, capable; but in that moment, vulnerable, exposed.

His heartrate skyrocketed. Instead of seeing the events played out as they happened, he saw the mercenary cover Kono's mouth with his hand, saw him pull a knife from his belt, watched in paralyzed horror as he drew it, swift and sure, across her throat.

He saw her body, motionless, in a pool of blood on his bedroom floor.

The sudden rush of dampness and the sharp sound of crinkling plastic interrupted his thoughts; his eyes flying open to see that he'd crushed the water bottle in his hand, the water rushing out and soaking his faded cotton gym shorts.

He forced himself to slow his breathing.

 _Focus. That's not what happened._

He closed his eyes again, saw the man coming up behind Kono, knew that she didn't hear him, didn't sense his presence. She was focused on the sound of someone creeping down the hall instead. Steve felt his knife in his own hand, fist closing around it, too close and too risky to get a shot off; no, he too needed to be silent.

His hands trembled, even clenched in the damp fabric of his shorts, as he remembered what it felt like. He hadn't merely incapacitated the man. No, he knew dozens of ways to incapacitate someone; temporarily and permanently, and he'd chosen the method that was most brutal. Most violent.

 _Most primal. Why?_

He rubbed a shaking hand across his face, leaned forward in his chair. In the darkness, it didn't matter if his eyes were open or closed; all he could see was Kono, her shoulders and hips squared in a perfect shooter's stance, just like she'd been taught, but the man coming behind her had been taught, too; taught to be silent, deadly, ruthless.

Steve stopped fighting it; allowed himself to feel what he had felt in that moment, when he'd rounded the corner and stopped dead in his tracks; when he realized in that split second that Nick Taylor had brought evil into his very home, and that evil was threatening to . . .

 _. . . Take away what is mine._

"Shit," Steve whispered into the dark.

It crashed over him, like a wave, stealing his oxygen and dragging him across the ocean floor. Kono, decking a guy for dropping on her wave; facing off against Sang Min with nothing more than clenched fists; her confident, imperceptible nod as she sat, bound and bleeding, waiting for his signal . . . over and over, images of her that he had carefully filtered through professional pride and brotherly affection until the darkness creeping up behind her swept that away, and in a blinding moment of absolute clarity he felt it for what it was.

 _Want._

 _Need._

 _Mine._

"Shit," he whispered again, bolting out of his chair and stepping forward, clenching the railings in his hands as if that would stop the sensation of his world falling out from underneath him.

"Steve?"

She was standing in his bedroom; standing at the edge of the blood stain on the rug. The blood that could have been hers.

Her voice was wrecked; shaking and broken, and if his entire being hadn't already been consumed with the awareness of her, he would have been dangerously startled. As it was, he half thought he was still caught in his own mind.

But then she stepped toward him, stepped just outside the doors, and the wind shifted, and it was coconut and sandalwood and she was _there_.

"Kono," he breathed, taking a step toward her, catching her by the elbows as her shaking knees refused to cooperate one more moment. He knew, clinically, that she was exhibiting signs of shock; absently thought that he should be calling for a bus, calling Chin.

But her hands, trembling, were tracing over his bruises and bloody cuts and she was saying something, so softly that he had to bend his head down to hear her.

"I was standing here," she said. "I was standing right here, and I could see you and Taylor, and I couldn't get a shot, it was impossible, the angle was no good and it was dark and you were falling and twisting. And I heard the shot and I thought -"

"Shhh," he said, cradling her head in the crook of his neck, enfolding her still trembling form, instinctively offering comfort and protection.

She didn't hesitate or keep distance; she leaned into his solid strength and warmth, wrapping her arms around his waist. He could feel her lips brush against his collarbone, feel her eyelashes flutter against his neck.

He could feel her heart beating.

His arms tightened around her, even as some rational part of his brain started a list of reasons this was a bad idea. It was the wrong timing; his house in splinters behind him, blood on the sand, blood on his floor. Blood on his hands. It was a metaphor for his life, symbolic of all the reasons he was no good for her: he was too broken, too damaged. Too bloodied. No, this was a bad idea. He tried getting his body to cooperate with his brain, tried willing his body not to respond to hers, pressed against him.

He failed.

Her breath hitched with the realization and he held on tight, memorizing the feel of her in his arms, the scent of her hair, before it all had to end. Before she pulled away in disgust at his lack of self-control.

She didn't.

"I would have killed him," she said, quiet, in his ear. "If he'd . . . if you . . . I would have killed him. Standing right here, in that moment, it was the one thing I knew. Chin, Danny . . . no one would have stopped me. I would have wrapped my hands around his throat and looked into his eyes while I ended him."

He slid his hand into her hair, tilted her head back to look into her eyes.

 _Want._

 _Need._

 _Mine._

"I didn't know," he whispered. "Before. I didn't know until tonight."

When their lips crashed together, it was raw and rough and desperate. He thought, at one point, that he tasted salt, and he drew back, alarmed, because if she was crying, if she didn't want this . . . but she surged forward and reclaimed his mouth with her own. And then he realized that he couldn't say with any certainty that he wasn't the one crying, but somehow it didn't seem important.

There was a noise, wrenched from the back of someone's throat, as he walked her backward into his bedroom. She stumbled, tripping over the edge of the rug, and his hands steadied her, wrapping around her hips. He stopped, then, looked down at the rug, at the blood and a few shards of broken glass resting on it, at her bare feet. He swept her up effortlessly in his arms, deposited her in a worn chair in the corner of the room. Not gently, not as if she would break, because

 _with her hands around his throat she would have looked into his eyes as she ended him_.

No, she wasn't fragile.

She watched as he bent and folded the edges of the rug up, over the shards of glass, over the blood that could have, almost, might have been hers. His movements were graceful and violent and the muscles weren't just for show, weren't just a canvas for the ink, and the rug went hurtling over the railing.

It would burn tomorrow.

And then, some of his fury vented, falling over the railing with the blood and broken glass, he paused. It wasn't too late, he could suggest they go downstairs, sit outside by the water . . .

Sit and look at the spot where he'd just killed his friend. He shuddered.

And then her hands were on his shoulders, sliding across his back, pulling him close. "Shhh," she said, cradling _his_ head in the crook of _her_ neck, because their height difference wasn't even all that significant, and she could both accept and offer comfort and protection, and that primal part of Steve's brain whispered to him . . .

 _Match. Mate._

But Steven J. McGarrett is nothing if he is not an officer, and a gentleman, and he pulled back, searching her eyes once more.

"Kono, this is . . . it's been a crazy day, there's a lot of adrenaline, I don't want you to regret an impulse . . . " he said, soft. Giving her an easy out.

"I showered, got dressed, picked up my keys and phone, and drove over here," she replied, long arms winding sure and steady around his waist.

"You didn't even put on shoes," he pointed out, but he was losing the fight, one hand already sliding up her back to tangle in her hair and tilt her head back.

"They're in my overnight bag on the landing," she whispered, her eyes, impossibly dark, looking square into his. "Intent; not impulse."

She smiled, then, for the first time that evening, as his eyes lit up, and the corners of his mouth turned up in that quick little smile, the one that shows the surprising flash of dimples, and makes him look young, and carefree, and not like someone who'd just . . . well. Just.

"Oh," he breathed, and finally - _finally_ \- bent his head just slightly and kissed her.

And it was soft and sweet and everything she thought it would be, and nothing like what she really needed tonight. But then he was looking at her again, and his hands were cradling her face, huge and strong and _possessive_ and it was

 _Want._

 _Need._

 _Mine._

And then it was a clash of lips, and teeth, and a tangle of the strong, muscled limbs of warriors who had done battle and come out the other side. It was leftover adrenaline coursing and crashing and pouring out, in gasps and moans and muttered curses. It was too close and what if, and it was the revelation of a wave of want and need ignored and denied roaring, demanding, to the surface and crashing, breaking over them.

Short hours of fitful sleep followed, not the soothing peaceful sleep of a storybook ending, but fractured and interrupted by flashes of memory and nightmares of what-ifs. Steve gave up the attempt altogether and was awake, but still, Kono's head on his shoulder and one long, slim leg thrown over his, when the weakest early morning light came through the broken blinds. His fingers traced idle circles over her shoulder, and she stirred slightly.

"Sorry," he said, meaning to apologize for waking her, looking down, looking across the bed, the tangled sheets, the blood- "Shit, Kono!" he gasped.

It was everywhere . . . smeared on the sheets, on her shoulder, a smudge on her collarbone. On her hip. The inside of her knee.

"Kono . . . Kono . . . " he murmured, one hand cradling her head, now, as he supported himself on that elbow, and the other hand ghosting over her, checking her frantically for injuries. "Kono," he whispered, broken, "my God, did I hurt you?"

He would never forgive himself; he would give himself over gladly to Chin and his shotgun.

"Hey, no . . . no," Kono said, her hands framing his face gently, soothing him. "You got all cut up, remember, and they weren't bandaged . . . it's not mine. It's not my blood, Steve, it's yours. From the attack, from the fight . . ."

He sank into her in relief, tucking his head into the crook of her neck, which in the space of a few short hours had become his new favorite place in the universe. Her hands ran gently over his shoulders until she felt some of the tension release. She let him tug her gently into the shower. He tenderly washed the blood away, and decided that the combined smell of her shower gel and his shampoo was something that he needed to smell every morning, from now on.

It was also probably going to be the first thing that Chin and Danny noticed, but he shoved that thought to the back of his mind to deal with later.

They stood, wrapped in towels, as Kono carefully patted dry the cuts littering his body, and secured them with steri-strips and covered them with bandages. As they dressed, Steve looked around the room, taking in the broken blinds, furniture turned askew from his violent removal of the rug, tangled, stained sheets . . . he shook his head in dismay.

"I need . . . I can't . . ." he stumbled over the words, stopped. "Are you hungry?"

Kono nodded, steeling herself for the morning-after trip to the diner where he would explain all the reasons he regretted the night before. She followed him wordlessly down the stairs and into the truck, and he turned out of his drive, not the way she expected. Not toward Five-O.

He drove along the coastal road, made a quick stop at a tiny walk-up and returned to the truck with two steaming coffees and a bag of food. The coffee gave Kono something to do with her hands, gave her a way to hide the fact that her lip was trembling in disappointment. They pulled off the road, onto a secluded access, surrounded with lush palms. Steve put his arm up on the back of the seat of the truck, looked over his shoulder, put the truck in reverse and parked it facing the road.

He handed Kono his coffee. "Hold this for me? I'll come around," he said, grabbing the bag of food, and a quilt that Kono hadn't noticed, folded on the back seat of the truck. He disappeared around the back, and she heard him fiddle with the tailgate, the toolbox, and then he was at her door, opening it, taking the coffees so she could slide out. There was an almost shy grin on his face as he tilted his head toward the bed of the truck.

Kono climbed up easily into the back of the truck, smiling at the neat arrangement of the quilt and settling against what felt suspiciously like a life preserver underneath it, propped against the toolbox to form a comfortable cushion. Steve handed the coffees off to her and climbed in, settling next to her.

"I thought you were taking me to breakfast to tell me you regretted last night," Kono admitted quietly, sipping her coffee.

"You - what? - Kono, no," he said earnestly, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and pulling her to him, kissing the top of her head. "Oh, Kono, I'm so sorry - no. It was just . . . everything at my house is all shot up, and broken, and torn up, and I just . . . I didn't want that to be the place, it didn't feel right to . . . " He stopped, took a deep breath. "I wanted our first morning together to be beautiful."

Kono's face was radiant in the growing light, her eyes sparkling, her hair drying in waves around her face. "Mission accomplished," she said, looking out over the water. "This is beautiful. Thank you, Steve."

Steve smiled, so incredibly pleased, and the thought crossed her mind, briefly, that no one as amazing as Steve McGarrett should seem so ridiculously unaccustomed to praise and gratitude. And then another thought crossed her mind, and she blurted it out before she could filter it.

"Our first morning?" she asked, studying the pattern on her coffee cup.

"Well, yeah," he replied, ducking his head and plucking at a thread on the quilt. "I mean, tomorrow morning, we'll have to start cleaning up and repairing . . . I mean, if you think that you might . . . be with me. Tomorrow morning."

Her breath hitched, and she dared a glance at him. He was looking at her, his face an open book of hope and uncertainty.

She nodded. "I'd like to be with you tomorrow morning," she whispered, setting her coffee on the toolbox.

He took her hands in his. "And the morning after that?" he asked quietly.

When their lips met again, it was everything the night before hadn't been: soft and sweet, slow and gentle, and they might have broken several laws regarding public nudity and lewd behavior, had they not been brought to their senses by Steve's phone buzzing and Kono's stomach growling.

Grinning, Steve grabbed his phone while Kono grabbed the bag of food.

"Yeah, Danny?" Steve drawled into the phone, his eyes still shamelessly skimming over Kono's lithe form, snuggled next to him as she happily took a bite out of a breakfast sandwich. "Well, that would be because I'm not at my house, Danny. Kono's car . . . yeah, I'll explain later . . . meet you at the airport." Steve started to end the call. "Danny, wait - hey, um, Chin isn't with you, is he? No? Okay."

Kono giggled.

#*#*#*#*#

They watched as General Pak and his family boarded the plane.

Danny saw Kono take Chin's arm and lead him off toward his SUV. Steve was looking after them, an inscrutable expression on his face.

"You okay?" Danny asked.

"Yeah," Steve said. "I should have known," he added, still looking at Kono.

"No, you shouldn't have," Danny argued. "How could you have known?"

"You knew," Steve pointed out, trying to drag his eyes away from Kono.

"No, no, no. I suspected. There's a big difference. And the view is a lot different from where I was standing," Danny said, glancing up at Steve, and back at Kono, and back to Steve. He shook his head, returning to the conversation at hand. "This guy Taylor was your friend. He used that to his advantage." Danny narrowed his eyes at Steve, glanced back at Kono, getting into the SUV with Chin. He grinned at Steve, smacked him on the shoulder. "But this is really really good news. I mean, you are a human being. Which is good news to me, because I had no idea."

"Well, you got good instincts, partner," Steve said, ducking his head in the brilliance of Danny's knowing smile.

"Right," Danny said, blue eyes crinkling as he gave a little wave to Kono and Chin.

"Longboards on me?" Steve asked, smiling at Kono as she rode off with her cousin.

"Absolutely," Danny nodded. "Can I see your wallet, please?"

"What?" Steve asked, distracted.

"Well, the last time you offered to buy me a drink, you conveniently left your wallet, and I got stuck for the . . . you don't have your wallet, do you?" Danny threw his hands up in exasperation.

"It's like I said, you got good instincts," Steve said, grinning down at him.


End file.
